


The Same

by lesbianettes



Category: Chicago Med
Genre: Angst, Blood, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mild Gore, Suicidal Thoughts, Unrequited Love, hanahaki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 10:37:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20581136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianettes/pseuds/lesbianettes
Summary: Connor is too in love, and he's dying.





	The Same

Every morning, when he awakens himself to the world, the first thing Connor recognizes is the pain. It had been dull at the very beginning, before he realized entirely what was going on. He thought it was a chest cold, a reaction to how cold it was and the fact that he sometimes failed to bundle up when the wind blew and the snow drifted. He took Robitussin, he broke out his childhood inhaler, he pushed through it because he didn’t have a fever and he didn’t look sick. But then it got worse, and worse, and worse, and now he wakes up to sunlight and alarms with the sharpest pain in his lungs, worsening with each deep breath. Painkillers don’t touch it anymore. And he knows, when his airway starts to feel closed off, he has to get rid of it.

Sitting now, upright on the soft mattress, he reaches for the trash can he keeps perpetually by his bed so he doesn’t get blood on his sheets all over again. He made that mistake once, and had to throw the covers away because some stains never come out. With the bin in his hand, he allows himself to cough. But it hurts. Every muscle in his torso tensing, his body trying to physically expel the things growing inside it, the weight of all the blood making it harder to absorb enough oxygen. He’s forcing himself, at that point, because he has to, and after a long moment a clump of flower petals and sticky blood come up, fall into the trash after filling his entire mouth with the taste of blood, as well as a thin coating that feels sticky, thick, disgusting. He almost vomits with it, but instead gets up for the day to clear his mouth and get ready for work.

No one knows how bad it is. No one knows he’s sick, because Connor is good at hiding it and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to handle the pity and the removal from his job and the way they’ll all try and fix him even though he’s long since accepted that he’s going to die. No one needs to know until it happens, least of all the reason this is happening to him. If Will knew, if he found out, he'd carry the weight of so much guilt, and he'd try to force himself to feel things he doesn't, and in the end it would only hurt everyone involved. So he hides it, even though he can't make it through his shower without coughing up more. 

He stands in front of the mirror, stares at himself after turning off the water and wiping steam with the back of his hand. Fingers to cool glass, eyes to what his clothes hide but his pain doesn't. The skin on his chest is red and irritated, blotchy with the spreading infection and the growths inside of him. The flowers. If he squints, he thinks he can see it moving as it spreads. Often, he can absolutely feel it. The curl of a vine around one of his ribs with excruciating pain, petals brushing against the walls of his lungs and sending him into a coughing fit. But the most obvious is the rash from bursting blood vessels and bruised ribs and organs, large and angry and obvious. It’s beginning to creep up from where his shirt covers, and he knows the second it’s visible at work, he’ll lose everything.

“I’m okay,” he tells his reflection, and leaves it behind to get a fresh pair of scrubs.

When he finally arrives at work, walking into the ER, there’s a man arguing in the hallway, and the moment he sees him, Connor sees himself. The man is screaming because he loves someone, loves this girl who’s pregnant with his child and he can’t have her. From a distance, he can see the blood dripping down the man’s shirt, on the floor, a rain of flower petals a halo around his feet. And then he’s hauled off by security, let out of the hospital, and gone with a mild fight, and someone starts mopping up the mess without a thought for the pain that man might be in. If he’s this angry, bleeding this much, it’s likely reached his brain and he could die any day, any hour. It’s not an excuse to terrorize that poor girl, but it has to hurt. Connor would rather die than live like that. For a morbid moment, he hopes the disease will kill him before it turns him into something he’s not.

“He’ll be back,” Connor tells Sharon, reaching for her to stop her from going after him. “He’s got the disease. He’s gonna come back.”

“Let’s hope not.”

She goes after security anyways, and he’s left to watch the young girl talk to Natalie, the blood streak as it’s mopped, the clock tick on the wall like it’s just waiting for something to go wrong. On cue almost, his chest seizes and he practically sprints to the bathroom so no one will have to see this happen. The door slams open and he barely makes it into a stall before he’s hacking, doubling over and quickly falling down onto his knees with a dull thud. Nothing comes at first- it rarely does- but before long comes the blood, and the petals, and after a moment full flowers that fall into the water and blood. And it feels like it’s physically crawling, skittering inside his windpipe and he knows it must be more of the plant taking him over. Spreading. Hurting. When he stops coughing, it’s still there and he knows it won’t go away.

He probably doesn’t have much time left.

Connor gets up, flushes the toilet, and goes to wash his hands and face anyways. There’s blood off the corner of his mouth, dripping from his nose, which is strange because he didn’t even feel it. He reaches up to wipe it away from his face, but just then, someone comes into the bathroom. Panicked, he looks up, and it’s Ethan, walking in slow and looking him up and down in a clinical assessment. He produces something innocuous but obvious from his hands, pale blue and white, commonplace given where they are right now. A mask.

“No,” he says. It’s not a choice. His bloody nose drips onto his top lip. “No, don’t.”

“It’s just for the blood,” Ethan answers, and makes a gesture like pulling his shirt up before extending out the mask. 

Connor looks down to see that the collar of his shirt has slipped low enough to reveal a bruise, and he pulls it up before reluctantly accepting the mask. He wears them all the time, but this is different. After wiping his face, he tucks the loops behind his ears and adjusts the mask, pinches it in the right place and makes sure it’s secure over his mouth and nose. Everyone will know. Sick, but not sent home. The disease. They’ll know it’s living inside him, and that before he knows it he’ll be dead, buried, consumed on the outside as well as the inside by forces of nature who understand exactly how much pain he’s in emotionally, and match it by tearing him apart from within. 

When he returns to his mirror image, he looks sicker by his flushed cheeks and the mask covering him so he can’t contaminate anyone or anything with the blood building up slowly in his lungs. He’ll drown in it if the rest of his body doesn’t give up on him first. He hates it. Nonetheless, he has no choice but to walk out of the bathroom and continue toward the cardio wing in spite of the mask, the obvious sickness and death getting a firm grip around his spine.

He doesn’t even make it as far as the wing before he reaches his father, arguing with some top dog on the board about something stupid. That’s not important, but he’s wheezing and hits his hand against his chest like it’ll stop whatever pain he’s in. Connor runs forward to check on him, and it’s a decision he’ll later regret. He convinces his father to come down to the ED for a checkup, just to be sure he’s alright. Just like with any other patient, he listens to his breath and to his heart, studies the sounds and the oxygen level when he takes proper vitals. It’s like with any other patient, except then his father wants to leave. But then the man from earlier comes back, and this time there’s a gun gleaming in his hands. He shoots, and by the time Maggie and other staff get to evacuating patients, there’s too much happening and he’s got his hands on the bloody chest of a security guard who got shot in the shoulder.

Kneeling beside Ethan, blood soaking the pant legs of their scrubs, he knows in the officer’s eyes that he recognizes Connor to be the same as the shooter. David, a voice in the back of his head supplies. He is understood to be just like David because of the mask over his mouth and the rash he knows is visible beneath his collar again. Today, everyone will know what he has become. And today, they will assume he is just like the shooter. Mocking him, he feels the plant squirming and expanding in his chest. 

“Run,” Ethan says quietly. “Get out before it’s too late. You’re sick.”

Those two words burn like acid in his veins.  _ You’re sick _ . He isn’t a patient, he’s a doctor, and it’s his job to take care of people, not the other way around. Connor shakes his head and keeps his hands on the officer’s bullet wound so that he won’t lose too much blood. It’s something easy to focus on over the sound of David yelling and the pressure building in his chest again because he’s bleeding heavier in the stress. He needs to cough again.

“Connor.”

Before Ethan can tell him again to leave, Maggie starts locking the doors and Will helps some woman tape sheets up over all the windows. They’re in here for a while, there are two gunshot victims down, the pregnant girl is here, Connor’s father is trapped, and April has a patient hiding in a bay. This is a mess, and there’s no telling how long they’re going to be stuck here, or how many more people are going to get hurt.

He pulls away from the victim to cough again, lifting his protective mask as he stumbles to a trash can because he won’t keep it trapped against his face. If there were any questions before, they must be gone now as he grabs the edge of the bin for stability. His muscles betray him again, tense, shake, force him to cough violently until he manages to clear out his airway at least a little. Blood, full of clots. Flowers. They fall, they sit, they stain, and Connor spits out whatever’s left in his mouth before pulling the mask back down and straightening up as best he can. His ribs ache in protest.

“Connor…”

When he follows the voice, it’s Will. Standing just a few paces away with that pitying look, and unaware of the role he has to play in the pain. It’s not his fault, no more than it’s Connor’s, but it still makes it worse to look at him. Even more so when Will reaches from him, and he flinches away. 

“How long?”

He tries to take a deep breath, but it hurts too badly. “A few months.”

“A few months?” Will moves too quickly, gets a grip on Connor’s arm before he can move back again, and it hurts so much. He fights not to make a sound, no matter how much he wants to scream. “Connor- you need surgery, you could die-”

“Hey! Stop talking!” 

The gun swings toward them and Will lets go. An ounce of relief. Connor rubs his wrist like it’ll destroy the lingering pain. He meets David’s eyes and, in that moment, there is more recognition.

David lowers the gun slightly and comes closer, mouth open slightly so he can get more air. There’s blood on his chin and in his teeth, down his chest, coming from his ears. He’s dead by the end of the week. It’s too late for him. “You’re just like me,” David says. “You understand. You have to- you can help me out here, you know how this feels!”

Before Connor has the chance to agree or disagree, Lily’s dad gurgles on the floor and spills blood from his mouth. It’s different from the blood that Connor chokes on. Thinner, oxygenated, relatively healthy. Natalie gets to arguing with David while Lily cries, and Connor should try to be useful but all he can do is try not to lose is balance from the dizzying pain as his diaphragm spasms again. When he pulls at his shirt, the rash is darker and varying from red to purple. If he looks closely, he swears he can see bumps where the disease ravishes his body. Or maybe he’s imagining things because it’s finally reached his brain after all this time.

“We need to let people out of here,” Natalie insists. “That officer, and Lily’s father, they need more treatment than we can give them. And Dr. Rhodes is dying.”

“He stays! He’s like me!”

For a sickening moment, the gun is pointed directly at Natalie’s face. But then it’s gone, and Connor almost sighs in relief before it puts too much pressure on his lungs. He has to focus, more than anything, on standing upright and keeping the pain off his face so no one worries. He’s done being worried over.

He misses some amount of time just trying to keep himself from crying, coughing, or collapsing. People are released from the situation. Lilly cries. David yells. Will keeps coming and standing in front of him, presumably trying to talk to him. He doesn’t stay long, and Connor loses the ability to focus his eyes at some point. He isn’t sure when. What brings him back is the sound of an alarm, of Maggie grabbing his arm and yanking him forward sharply.

His father is having a heart attack.

On some level, he knows it should register, but instead he just stumbles to his father and does chest compressions like it’s reflex until Maggie tells him to stop. His father’s heart beats on its own. But he needs to be in heart surgery now, and before Connor can voice that, there’s a gun in his face and a demand to perform a c-section on the screaming, pregnant, terrified teenage girl. All he asks in return is that his father be allowed out, and it actually works, and then they’re all going to his hybrid OR to save the girl and her baby. 

One step out of his father’s bay, and he collapses. 

He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he’s breathed deeply, but he chokes on his own blood when he tries and feebly pushes himself up on his elbows to get rid of it. Thick blood full of flowers, full of seeds. He’s not going to make it long. Lying on linoleum and staring up, struggling to get oxygen. Will kneels beside him and Connor wants to tell him to go away, but he can’t. All he can do is gesture at his side, form his hand in a circle in hopes someone understands. A chest tube. Get the blood out of the way so he can save the little girl.

By some miracle, Will understands.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry Connor,” he says as he cuts between his ribs. 

It doesn’t hurt as bad as the disease does. In goes the tube, and with a rush of blood, it gets a little easier to breathe. Easy enough for Connor to sit up and cough some more, dispel some more flowers. He starts to push himself up, go to operate on Lily, but Will pushes down on his shoulder, a pressure that feels like pure fire burning into him.

“You’re really sick, Connor. You can’t-”

“I have to help,” he gets out, and makes it as far as the trash can to throw up. More blood. He’s running out of time. “I can tell you how to operate. She can’t die, Will…”

His legs feel weak, but he makes it all the way to the hybrid OR and leans against the wall, his chest tube drooling blood and petals on the floor as he instructs them with as much clarity as he can. How to cut, how to pull, how to save the baby. With every passing moment, he slurs more of his words, coughs more because he’s still bleeding too heavily even with the chest tube helping to relieve the pressure. There’s a lot of blood that’s not his, and then crying because they saved the baby, and next is Lily as he tells them to stitch her up. He can’t hear himself very well anymore. His head hurts. Everything hurts.

“Connor,” Will says, but he sounds far away. 

He’s touching him again, hurting him again, but Connor can’t eke out a protest. The best he can do is reach up to his head because it feels like an icepick is driving into his skull and he swears, he swears he can feel the plant moving under his skin.

The pain turns searing as it reaches his ears. He tries to touch them out of a morbid impulse and they come away bloody, and he can’t hear, and when he looks up Will is talking to him but all he can hear is ringing and something like leaves rustling. 

An arm loops around his waist, pure agony, and he’s dragged more than walks to a hospital bed. No. No, he doesn’t want to be a patient. He shakes his head and tells them to let him die, or better yet, kill him, although he isn’t sure if he actually makes a sound because he can’t hear a thing. He makes a loose grab for his chest tube before he’s restrained by a hand so heated it must be Will’s.

“I don’t wanna hurt because of you anymore!” he cries, or at least hopes he does. “Just kill me, make it stop! Make it stop, I just wanna die!”

For a blissful moment, the world is still outside of himself.

Then there’s a face mask and he refuses to be treated like this, to become helpless on a ventilator and kept alive by machines because that wouldn’t be alive. He shakes his head.

But then, Will.

Will smiles at him, brushes his hair out of his face so tenderly. He takes a pen and writes on his own arm,  _ so you die in peace _ . And that, that Connor can accept, so he nods and allows calloused hands to secure the mask over his face without fight, although every brush of skin is a thousand needles digging deep enough to scratch bone. But he inhales against the mask, even as his lungs fight and he tastes copper, until he’s melting away and the pain begins to fade.

Some time later, Connor wakes up.

He wasn’t supposed to wake up.

The world is silent as he weakly pushes himself up on his elbows and inhales, deeper than he’s been able in a long time, although he still feels a slight rattle in his lungs that tells him the disease still has his body in its grip in spite of whatever happened in the time he missed. Hands shaking, he opens his hospital gown to find a bandage running from his sternum to his belly button, a little bloodstained but not too badly. On instinct, he reaches up to his head as well, and finds a gauze with an edging of haphazardly shaved skin. He was operated on. But he’s still sick, and now he can’t hear a thing, and when he tries hard, the last thing he remembers is the ringing so loud it gave him more of a headache than he had already managed to sustain.

Well, he remembers that he didn’t want to be operated on, didn’t want to be treated, and definitely didn’t want to become a helpless patient like he is now. And after everything, he’s still sick, and he just wanted to die. He’ll do it himself if he has to.

He briefly looks around to make sure he’s alone. He is. No one would want to see him like this, after all. Connor grabs the edges of his bandages, curls his fingers beneath the gauze, and rips upward. The adhesive hurts as it rips off his skin, but then he’s left staring at a long line down his torso. There’s still scabs, still stitches. And he shouldn’t do this. But he’s got at least some painkillers in his system, so he takes a deep breath, shuts his eyes, and tries to pull the sutures open.

After popping only three stitches, someone comes running. His monitors must be making noise, not that he can hear it in the slightest. Nurses grab his wrists, force them down at his sides and start to restrain him, although he quickly stops resisting because he simply lacks the strength.

His face begins to feel wet, and it occurs to him that he might be crying.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @beelivia


End file.
